


vertices of the quadrilateral

by tielan



Category: DC Cinematic Universe
Genre: Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Justice League (2017), Relationship Negotiation, Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 03:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13262880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: All in all, Alfred reflects, it’s a good outcome. None of them may be a sweet young thing from Metropolis (well, Mr. Kent, perhaps), but Bruce would be wasted on an innocent – just as the innocent would be wasted on Bruce.





	vertices of the quadrilateral

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ljparis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ljparis/gifts).



It wasn’t cheating at the time. Clark was dead.

It was...comfort. Companionship. An exploration of something new – some _one_ new and different...

Now Clark is back. Alive. Whole. Still loving her.

That changes things.

Lois thinks Diana understood as they held each other in the aftermath of the invasion. She felt it in the touch to her shoulder, in the warmth of Diana’s arms wrapped around her and the press of her lips against Lois’ temple the last time they saw each other in the aftermath of the alien invasion attempt.

“It was...casual,” she explains, as Clark looks almost distantly at her. “Oh, I mean—that doesn’t describe—I mean, we both knew it wasn’t going to be a...a relationship like the one you and I had.”

“And it meant something.”

His voice is calm – oddly calm. And Clark was always a man of great control, but this isn’t control. This is something else. And maybe Lois doesn’t want a jealous rage from Clark – dear god, that would be horrific – but...this isn’t entirely right either. She expects some emotion from him about this – a little hurt, maybe? And she’s getting...nothing.

She swallows. “Yes. I’m not leaving you, Clark – I don’t want to leave you.”

“But you love her.”

“I love her _too_.” Lois makes it a statement, not a plea; she’s not asking for his understanding, because her heart wants what it wants, but her head knows she’s not going to get it.

He takes a deep breath, in and out, his gaze dropping to her hand – and the ring on it. They haven’t discussed the wedding yet. Too much has taken place all around them to even contemplate something as time-intensive as a wedding: Clark’s return, both as Clark and as Superman, the destruction caused by Steppenwolf and his minions and what it means for Earth, and the formation of the Justice League.

The Justice League of which Diana is a part.

“She understood loss,” she tells Clark. “But it wasn’t so personal – it wasn’t the loss of _you_.”

Not the way it was for Martha. Not the way it was for the people at the Daily Planet. Not the way it was for the world grieving Superman.

“And you want to see her when you’re in Paris next week.”

“I love you, Clark, and I want to marry you. But I’m going to keep my friendship with Diana – _just_ as friends. We were friends before we were lovers, and that’s still important to me.”

Clark stares at her for a long moment. “You didn’t have to tell me this. If you hadn’t, I might never have known.”

She thought about not telling him. But that would have been deceptive; and it’s not in her or Diana to hide the truth. Her first mentor in journalism liked to use the quotation, _There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed,_ as the reason for investigating situations; Lois simply thought of it as a warning.

She looks Clark in the eye. “I want to be honest about this.”

And if she has to give up that intimacy with Diana, then Clark should know. They’re partners, right? To Lois – and to Clark – that means honesty, it means transparency, and it means understanding.

“Did you...?” Clark hesitates and drops his gaze. Blushes in the way that only the boy from Smallville would. But he looks back at Lois and coughs a little. “Did you want to keep seeing Diana? Sexually as well?”

Yes, she does, although not if it means losing Clark.

Yet the way he asks the question suggests an openness that makes her heart lift. Still, Lois is cautious. Is he proposing a threesome? She’s not sure she’d be okay with that. Sleeping with Diana was enough of a revelation and a challenge; she doesn’t think she could do both Diana and Clark at once. No time to think it through, he’s still waiting for a decision.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He reaches out, and closes his hand lightly into hers. “I love you, Lois – that hasn’t changed. And I think Diana was a source of strength for you while I was...gone. So I understand if you want to keep Diana as a lover...”

“Clark, it’s not a choice.”

“I know.” It’s said with such breathtaking simplicity – and a hint of indulgent amusement. “Which is why I’m not going to force you to choose.”

Lois’ heart is pounding. “You’re not?”

“I’m not.” He grins at her shock, and there’s the Clark she knows and loves and missed so fiercely when he was gone. “You look like you’ve swallowed a fly, Lois.”

“I’m just—” A little freaked out, perhaps. “Thank you, Clark.”

“We’ll have to iron out details with Diana. But...” He tugs her across and leans in, his mouth angling across hers as he murmurs, “You’re welcome, Lois.”

Lois leans into the kiss, sweet and tender and intense, with the inevitable tang of physical dominance that’s always characterised her relationship with Clark and, really, always will.

When he floats over the table and swoops to scoop her up, she blinks, because the flying around the apartment is new. But she’s not complaining when he nuzzles her throat as he flies them into the bedroom and lays her down on the bed. And in spite of the news that she’s had another lover, he’s no more or less ardent or gentle than he’s ever been.

* * *

They’ve been sitting in this café for nearly half an hour, speaking of small and casual things: Diana’s archaeology work, the political state of Europe, the slow and steady development of the League.

This slow and easy conversation is not unusual for them. Today, however, Lois seems less focused - almost nervous as she rests her wrists on the table edge.

“You seem troubled.”

The statement makes Lois look up, startled, and brings an uncertain smile to her face. “Oh, I’m sorry, Diana. I’m just...distracted.” She sets her shoulders and her mouth. “I told Clark about us the night before I left Metropolis.”

 _Ah_. Diana presses down the disappointment at the realisation that Clark must have nixed the relationship. Men are frequently possessive about the women in their lives. It is one reason Diana has preferred relationships with women in Man’s World – there is more understanding from a partner, and fewer demands. No matter. Lois is a friend and a sister, and Diana values her in all roles and parts, even if she will miss the tender, exploratory lover. “We shall be friends; I trust he has no objections to that?”

“He-- No, he has no objections—” Lois seems bewildered, and Diana waits for her to finish. Finally, “Clark was fine with it. He said we could continue to see each other.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” Diana says after a moment in which Lois hesitates, as though there is more to say, but she is not willing to address it. “You were not expecting he would give his agreement?”

“Not so easily. I thought there’d be some difficulty – he was brought up in a conservative community, even if Martha and Jonathan were open-minded. And he’s still male, even if Clark’s never been the kind of guy to get all macho. And I’m relieved that he wasn’t jealous, but...”

She pauses, trying to find the words. Diana waits for Lois to finish, because this is a woman who uses her words to great effect. If she is trying to find a good phrase to express her discomfort, then interrupting her or hurrying her will not achieve that goal.

Finally, Lois leans in, lowering her voice. “I feel a little crazy. It’s nothing I can pin down, just a...sense of something having changed in him. A feeling that he’s different...”

“Your instincts are telling you that something has changed in him.”

“It’s nothing big. Nothing that’s obvious. He’s still—oh, in so many ways, he’s still _Clark_ , and yet.. Things like this. The way he reacts is new – I found him standing at the balcony of our apartment, just staring out at the world. Not listening, not hearing something that he needed to do or someone in trouble, just staring at it like he’d never seen any of it before. But when he turned, he was Clark again.” Her gaze flicks up to Diana. “It’s not dangerous, I swear. Just...different.”

Diana nods. Lois is an intelligent woman, and one who is not inclined to take everything she knows as absolute. If she says that the changes in Superman are not dangerous, as intimate as they are, then Diana trusts her, even as she fears for her.

This might be nothing. And yet, given all that Kal is, if it turns out to be something more, then it would be better to identify it early.

“Would you speak with Bruce about this? These changes that you mention?”

“It’s only—”

“It is the man you love who has come back from the dead, through the mechanism of a technology of which we know little to nothing. It is not ‘only’ anything.”

“You’re starting to worry me.”

“It is a precaution,” Diana says. “Nothing more.”

“Now I wish I hadn’t told you.”

“And yet I am glad you have confided this in me.” The weight of Lois’ trust bears upon her – not only that Diana will not misuse it professionally, but that she will not misuse it personally, in leverage against Kal-El in her relationship with Lois. “I will not push you to speak about it. But I suggest bringing it to Bruce’s attention – for the sake and the safety of the League.”

“I’ll think about it,” is Lois’ concession, although Diana can see that she most likely will.

True to her word, she doesn’t press the issue – not then. And not later, back at the hotel after Lois has done her interview with a divisive political figure – one of the sequence of interviews for which Lois has come to Europe. They keep company as they have always done: first as friends, two women forging an unexpected connection in the aftermath of the attack of Luthor’s monster, and then as lovers, tender and affectionate in ways that Man’s World did not always recognise as valid.

This arrangement between her and Lois is nothing strange to her Amazonian sensibilities, but she is careful not to press Lois too far. What is easy to accept on paper is more difficult in to parse in the physicality of love, with the mores and morals of monogamy lingering in Lois’ mind, even as she slides her fingers into Diana’s hair and lifts her face for the kiss.

Afterwards, lying with her head tucked into Lois’ neck, sweat drying under her fingertips, Diana doesn’t need the recognition of this thing between her and Lois; but it is good to know they have Clark’s acceptance.

* * *

“Lois came to see me last week.”

Bruce tosses the bait out over a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and a good, strong red. The dinner was Alfred’s idea, not his.

Diana twirls more pasta on her fork and lifts an eyebrow. “And?”

“You told her to come to me.”

“I’m glad she took my advice.” She regards him with a limpid gaze. “What are your conclusions?”

He’s pretty sure she’s laughing at his attempt to draw her into telling him something which _isn’t_ what Lois came to him about, but he figures it was a long shot anyway. A woman who’s lived a hundred years and more – probably a lot more, given what he’s found out about her since he hunted up that photo – isn’t going to squawk like a Gotham criminal under interrogation.

“We don’t have a baseline for Superman’s physiology before his...reanimation. So any comparison is going to be incomplete at best. We have only Lois’ word that things have changed.”

“The word of a woman.”

“That’s not the problem.” At least, he’s reasonably sure it’s not.

“Then what _is_ the problem, Bruce?”

He takes a moment to gather his thoughts. “Superman is the most visible member of the League – a global hero. We brought him back to be the hero he was.”

“ _You_ brought him back to be the hero he was.” Diana doesn’t spare him the weight of responsibility.

And that’s the part that sits darkly upon Bruce – his dream-vision-what-have-you of Superman gone bad. What if Bruce killed the hero that he didn’t trust not to be a monster, and created a monster he now trusts with his life, the League, and the world? What if he is the author and creator of the problem he feared in the first place?

“All right; I did. But if he’s not the hero he was – if he’s changed...”

“Then it is better to know now and either to curb him or halt him.”

She sounds so certain; and yes, Bruce stopped Superman once before, but now that Clark is wise to what Bruce can do— Bruce pulls back. Right now, the question is how they’re going to determine if there’s a problem with Superman.

“We can do baseline physiology for all members of the League, to be updated yearly.” Which is intrusive to members such as Victor, still sensitive about his changing physicality and mentality, and to Bruce as the League’s only physically aging human. But if this is necessary, then Bruce will submit to it, and he’ll talk to Victor about it.

“You don’t like the idea,” Diana says, perceptive and uncompromising. “Yet you suggested it.”

“Even a yearly scan isn’t going to necessarily show us what’s changed,” he says, choosing not to enter into the question of his own self-esteem. His personal feelings are not relevant; this is about the League and Earth and how best to protect it – whether from its enemies, or from its heroes.

Diana sits back and cups the bowl of her wineglass in her palm. “That is why we are a league and not just disparate individuals. Then we have accountability to each other. _With_ each other.”

“Okay then.” Bruce leans forward, elbows on the table. “So try this on for accountability. As one member of the League to another, what’s your interest in Clark’s state of mind and body given you’re both in a relationship with Lois Lane?”

He’s known about Diana and Lois for just over six months now; he didn’t say anything because it wasn’t his business. It wasn’t until they brought Superman back that it occurred to him that Diana had a very personal reason not to want the return of Clark Kent in Lois’ life.

But Diana tilts her head. “I was not brought up in your society, Bruce. That which is between a man and a woman is different to what is between a woman and a woman, or a man and a man – so held my people. So Lois may have both Kal and myself – one of each – so long as we are both in accordance with the other relationship.”

Bruce frowns. “Clark accepts that?”

“If you doubt me, you may call him and ask.”

Diana isn’t a liar, and Lois isn’t a cheater. Yet Bruce can’t imagine Clark – brought up to be a red-blooded, all-American guy – being okay with sharing his wife, even if it’s with a woman rather than another man. But it’s not his matter to question.

“You know, Bruce,” Diana smiles, sweet and lazy and dangerous, “No-one would fault me for taking you to bed, so long as Lois was accepting of it.”

Bruce’s gut tightens, heat flooding his veins. He’s used to this kind of teasing, on the edge of invitation but not crossing over. This is...different.

“Few people would fault you anyway,” he acknowledges. “Or me, if it comes to that.”

“Ah, but you would not be a name in my little black book, Bruce. I assure you.”

He wouldn’t settle for being one anyway. Not to Diana. “Would you believe the stories of my little black book are wildly exaggerated?”

“I could not know, could I? Not without my own proof.” She regards him, steady and curious. “Would you give me such proof, Bruce?”

He regards her for a long moment, realising why this offer shakes him: no woman who ever climbed into his bed – or offered hers – has ever known who and what he was from the start of their relationship.

Diana knows.

Bruce allows himself to think about Diana in his bed, about trusting strength and beauty and immortality with his scars and his vulnerabilities and the knowledge of what he pretends to be and what he truly is. Absolute nakedness – not just skin, but soul. Bruce holds back a shiver. Of terror or excitement?

When he speaks, he has to clear his throat a little, but his voice is even and a little wry. “Nine out of ten men in the dress, and ten out of ten out of it?”

“You of all men would not let me get away with anything, clothed or naked.”

Bruce wishes he could be so sure of that.

“I’ll think about it.” The roughness of his voice is more than the gravelly tones of the Bat.

Her answer is warm and inviting and infinitely understanding. “I hope you do.”

* * *

“So, Mr Wayne, you don’t feel any lingering sense of displacement by the Justice League’s use of your family’s ancestral home?”

“It’s not like I’m using it, Ms. Lane. And, I figure, if there’s anyone who can take the kind of damage that the League is likely to inflict on a piece of property well, it’s me or Lex Luthor, and, uh, well, Luthor’s already shown his hand.” He shifts, as though uncomfortable with the mention of the former industrialist billionaire who resurrected the corpse of General Zod into Doomsday, and, through his machinations against both Bruce and Clark, got Clark killed.

Lois hides a smile, even as she admires the man’s acting ability. Before the fight against Doomsday, she would never have guessed that Bruce Wayne was the Batman – and yet now that she knows—

“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Wayne, it was most informative.”

“I trust that your photographer there will make me look good?” Bruce waves a hand vaguely at his left side. “The scars’ll be gone in a couple of years, but in the meantime— Ms. Lane, I hear you have an interest in wartime journals – I have a collection I’m sure you’d like to see, if your boss can spare you for an hour or two.”

The smile is charming, the expression intense, and Lois’ heart skips a beat. She’s taken, not immune, but they both know there’s more to the smile than an attempt to get her into bed. The photographer rolls her eyes and mutters about ‘some people have all the luck’ when Lois accepts. She’s shown out by an elderly secretary with a wry and tolerant smile, and the door closes behind them.

“We probably should find a more direct means of communication. I can’t interview you every time we need to talk.”

“Probably.” He smiles as he taps another button and the display cabinet before them swings around to stop open with a hiss of air, showing a series of carefully-arranged leather-bound journals, some of them very old. “But this is kind of fun.”

“Doesn’t fun go against the Batman’s principles?”

He eyes her. “I like a good bit of intrigue, same as the next Batman.”

Lois smiles. The sense of humor is very droll and very dry, but also rather sweet – a very human, very candid side to him. “So what are we discussing today, Mr. Wayne? Clark? The League? You and Diana? All of the above?”

She gets a sharp look at the mention of him and Diana. The truth is that Lois wouldn’t have known if not for Diana’s phonecall the other morning. But that’s Diana: absolutely truthful, and equally prompt. In Diana’s mind, Lois has the right to know who else her lover is with and so Diana let her know.

Bruce clears his throat. “We’ve completed scans on all the members of the League. Including Clark.”

“And?”

“And we don’t have a baseline from which to measure his phsyiology or his responses.”

“So you don’t believe me.”

“We have no scientific proof,” Bruce says. “But I’m willing to take your word that something is different.”

“ _And_ that he’s not dangerous?”

Lois would like that assurance, especially after Bruce targeted Clark, thinking he was a risk to Earth.

“Oh, he’s dangerous, all right. Just not to you or to us.” The smile has little humour in it – it’s definitely a Batman expression. “What we have that’s definable is his behavioural cues. And those will come from you and Martha.”

“So you want us to give information about Clark to a man who once tried to kill him.”

“No,” he says, the grave, whiskey-rough voice managing to sound even more solemn than usual. “I don’t entirely trust myself with Clark. If you see something you think warrants attention, I want you to tell Diana.”

Lois looks at him, surprised at both the admission and the solution. It’s not something she would have expected of the Batman – to give over control to someone else. Then again, she supposes, it’s Diana who makes the difference – Diana whom Bruce trusts.

Diana who loves them both, wants them both – who could have anyone, just as Clark could, and yet loves Lois.

Sometimes it still stuns her.

She was perhaps a little jealous when Diana told her about Bruce – a small flame of resentment that she snuffed out before it could smolder into something worse. Now, she thinks, she doesn’t mind sharing – not with this man who’s both a little obsessive, and a little broken.

Then again, aren’t they all?

“You’re a good man, you know, Mr. Wayne.”

“But still a man,” he counters. A corner of his mouth quirks, “As Diana is fond of reminding me.”

* * *

Clark finds Bruce in what Alfred euphemistically termed ‘the home gym’ beneath the glassy, modern house that Bruce Wayne built so he wouldn’t have to live among the ghosts of his history.

Bruce is stripped naked to the waist, chains attached to tyres slung around his shoulders as he does pull-up reps with steady strength and sheer determination. Sweat gleams across his skin, and the bleak fluorescent lights skim the bruises and scars of Bruce’s latest run-in with the dregs of Gotham City.

The man shows no sign of stopping, so Clark waits. He’s curious. And Bruce is... captivating.

The heartbeat pounds against a frail, human chest. Hoarse breath rasps through determined lungs. Muscles strain and flex beneath his skin. It’s a raw, brutal beauty. Yet it’s not the physicality that draws Clark’s eye – impressive as that is. It’s the drive behind it, the determination that built the Batman, that found a way to stop Clark when he thought him a threat, that built the League up with cunning and encouragement and a refusal to lie down quietly, that found a way to bring Clark back when the world needed him.

Perhaps that’s an odd thing for Clark to admire, but Bruce is a category all his own.

The reps stop. “I didn’t say tonight.” Tyres and chains are dropped to the floor with a clatter.

“You said ‘at my earliest convenience’.”

Bruce retrieves a towel from a railing, scrubbing it over his face. “Diana explains it better,” he mutters, but stalks over to a terminal in the wall and starts pulling up displays on the screen at the end of the room. “All right. These are the brain scans we took of you last week. We don’t have a baseline for comparison from before you died, but they exactly match the specs in the Genesis Chamber for Kryptonian brains.”

A second window opens up and Clark studies the two but can’t see any difference.

“And here are the notes we extracted from the Genesis Chamber and the ship databanks.”

The scan windows vanish, and data streams across the screen. It scrolls far too fast for a human to read, but not too fast for Clark. It’s not until he reaches the end and stares at the notations in English at the end, that he realises that what he just read was in Kryptonian – a language in which he has no fluency – and that he understood it all.

“You understood it, didn’t you?”

He looks at Bruce, still processing what he’s read, making meaning of it, even as his thoughts – his _thoughts_ – spin around in circles.

It doesn’t help that Bruce is gulping down water from a wide-mouthed bottle, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. A splash of water drips down the firm jaw and onto the broad pectoral, before trickling into the sheen of sweat there. And the scent of Bruce permeates this room – sharp sweat and body odor, oil grease and rusty steel.

Clark makes himself think about what just passed before his eyes instead of what’s before his eyes.

“My brain is Kryptonian again?”

“It never stopped being Kryptonian.” Bruce considers him. “Know anything about neuroplasticity?”

He dredges the term up from the depths of his memory. “Brain trauma. Patterns of thought. Neural structure and which neurons are paired together causing overlapping emotional reactions and habitual responses...”

“You’d been thinking like an Earthling for thirty-three years, even if your physiology was Kryptonian. But after the Genesis Chamber did its magic on you—”

“My patterns of thought – the neural structure of my brain – reverted to a Kryptonian standard.” Clark looks at Bruce. “Is this why—?”

“Why what?”

“Some things feel...new. Things that I’ve done before, but which feel...unfamiliar. Thoughts I never used to have in certain situations. Seeing people differently. Sometimes...it seems that I’m feeling things through a thin pane of glass. I know what I should feel, and the emotion is there but it’s...muted.”

“Is Lois one of those things you see differently?”

“No.” Startled and shocked, Clark’s response is immediate. The warmth that Lois brings to him – the intimacy he feels with her, around her, in her arms – that hasn’t changed, thank god. “Not Lois.”

“Right.” Bruce shrugs. “So maybe it’s like printing the articles from _The Daily Planet_ onto the paper and format of _The Gotham Nightly_? Still the same paper, but...not quite.”

Clark grins.

Bruce’s matching smile quirks one corner of his mouth before it fades little. “Diana thinks we should be accountable to each other anyway, now that we’re the League. It’s probably the best option we’ve got. Keep an eye on each other’s behavior, and if you turn Kryptonian megalomaniac...”

“You’ll stop me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“There’s no-one else I trust more to kill me, Bruce.”

A pulse leaps in Bruce’s throat as he growls, “That’s not a distinction I care for anymore.”

“It’s still true.” Amused whimsy washes through him as he thinks of something one of the interns shared with him today. “Kill, fuck, or marry.”

He doesn’t realise what he’s said, what it implies, until Bruce’s blood starts hammering in his veins. Still, the other man answers lightly. “Is that a proposition or a checklist?”

It had been a joke – at least until it was said out loud, until Bruce reacted. Now, Clark finds that it’s very serious.

He’s never been attracted to men before – not like this. The friends he had in Kansas, the men he met through the years wandering, the urban citizens of Metropolis where anything and everything went – none of them ever produced such a visceral response in him. Only Bruce.

He answers steadily. “A checklist and a proposition. If you want it to be.”

He receives a look just as steady and clear. “Is this because of Diana? Or because of Lois? Or both?”

“Because of you. Because of who you are, what you are, what you made of yourself, who you try to be. I trust you, Bruce. And if you never want to bring this up again, then we’ll do that.” That needs saying, because Clark wants, but he learned long ago from Jonathan and Martha that wants aren’t needs and to blur the line is selfishness. “I don’t force, and I won’t coerce you.”

“Come willingly or not at all?”

“Yes.”

The moment stretches out. Clark doesn’t move from where he stands. He doesn’t dare. His own acknowledgement of admiration and desire is a furnace in his belly, but it’s both a goad and a restraint, because Clark can’t make the first move – not with Bruce.

So he waits for Bruce to speak up, one way or the other. A yes or a no, either of which Clark can live with. He just...really hopes Bruce says yes.

Then, Bruce steps in close. The tension in him is still sharp as his hand cups Clark’s jaw and his eyes hold Clark’s as he leans in.

He’s never kissed a man before. He’d never been interested in men – or, rather, he’d never found a man he was interested in. Now he has...

It’s not like kissing Lois, who gives way to Clark. This is a subtle duel, lips and tongue and hands and mouths, neither of them quite giving way – but neither of them needing to, either. And it’s...exhilarating. Like flying, or finishing a really good article just ahead of the deadline. Like understanding who he is and what he is and why he is.

Like falling in love.

It’s Bruce who pulls back first, and Clark lets him go, his lashes lifting to look the other man in the eyes. And yes, there’s desire there, but also a wary awareness. Then his mouth curves, lazily.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

Clark accepts that – it’s more than he would have expected from Bruce. “When you do decide, you know where to find me.”

* * *

Diana is a little surprised to find Kal in the library when she arrives at the house. Ah, but Lois is presently in South Carolina, investigating electoral corruption and political cover-ups, so it makes sense that Kal would choose to spend his spare time here, even if it is not to be with Bruce.

“Hey,” he blinks at her over the glasses, then smiles in welcome. “You look lovely.”

“You look engrossed.” She comes in and seats herself on the arm of the chair opposite him and indicates the books he’s reading, _Social Animals With Brains: The Neuroscience of Human Relationships_. “Has Mr. White assigned you to the history and culture department then?”

“No. But I’m reading up on our situation.” His wave of the finger indicates them, Bruce, the house, and encompasses Lois, far across state lines. “Or, at least, our relational situation as it developed here on Earth.”

The qualification of ‘on Earth’ intrigues Diana. Her field of specialty is archaeology, but she knows a fair portion of anthropology, too – not all of it of the kind taught in academia anymore. “I did not know of any such relationship patterns codified here on Earth. I imagined that there are unofficial examples of it, but few recorded.”

“No, that’s pretty much the situation.” Kal looks rueful. “There was a term for it in Kryptonian society, but the best translation into English is ‘marriage siblings’.”

“Not exactly a term that applies here.”

“No. But the concept was much the same – a brother and a sister of the same lineal descent would have marriages with two people, whom they would share as lovers. Even in situations where binary gendering did not apply, the dynamic would remain – four people, with four sexually intimate relationships, and two non-sexually intimate relationships.”

“So you and I are the siblings?” It seems fitting enough to Diana. “I have never had a brother.”

“I’ve never had a sister.” Kal runs a finger down the page, almost shy. “You really don’t mind sharing them?”

“Do you?” Diana watches the emotions chase across his face. This, at least, is still open in him – the heart of a man within the body of a Kryptonian. So long as he feels as a human does, he will act as a human does, within the constraints his human parents gave him. “They are neither mine nor yours. They are their own, but they consent to be ours. As we consent to be theirs.”

“Were things always so simple among the Amazons?”

“No.” Diana can think of more than a few relationships and their adjuncts that went 'toxic'. “But in a society closed off to a broader world, people are less inclined to complicate things. There is nowhere to run from one’s problems; one must face the consequences, and deal with the situation.”

A step in the doorway behind her and a rustle of fabric. “Deal with what situation?” Bruce walks in, adjusting his cufflinks.

She casts a smile over her shoulder at Bruce. “We were discussing conflict and resolution in closed societies.”

“Originally starting with an anthropological assessment of our...circumstances.”

“Ah. So...light evening conversation, then?” Bruce comes up beside Diana, placing a hand on her bare spine as he leans down to brushes his lips past her ear in a greeting kiss, causing her to shiver. “Do you have something against backs on dresses, Diana?”

“Do you have something against backless dresses, Bruce?”

“You already know I have nothing against anything you wear – except that you’re wearing it.” His voice is rough, and his eyes are intent – and that’s the billionaire playboy coming out to play. “Maybe we could skip the fundraiser and scandalise Clark instead?”

Diana glances at Kal, who is both watching and blushing. She wonders if it is his human sensibilities or his Kryptonian ones that are at the fore of his embarassment. Even in polygamous relationships such as these, there would be mores and taboos, complexities that not everyone will comprehend. Either way, “He is already scandalised, so your work here is done.”

Bruce sighs and looks over at Kal. “Alfred is in the study. You can hit him up for anything you need. A snack or a drink. Conversation or questions. But no interrogating him about my childhood while I’m not there to defend myself!”

Kal smiles at them both, but his gaze lingers on Bruce. “If you insist. Have a good night.”

“You, too.”

Diana quirks a smile at him, then allows Bruce to hustle her out of the library and down to the garage and the car.

* * *

Alfred would not deny that when he imagined Master Bruce in a relationship other than the one-night stands and hookups that used to be the sum total of his emotional connection, it was not as one vertice of a quadrilateral dynamic.

“Not that I’m minded to complain,” he tells Bruce one night after Bruce comes back from the League Hall with a very distinct love-bite on his throat. “Considering your night-time activities are hardly conducive to trust-based relationships. Will you need a poultice for that?”

“No. It’ll fade by the morning,” Bruce assures him as he pours nightcaps for Alfred and himself.

Alfred snorts. Given the color and the coloring around the mark, he’s not so sure about that. “If it doesn’t, I might have to ask Ms. Lane what concealer she uses.”

All in all, Alfred reflects, it’s a good outcome. None of them may be a sweet young thing from Metropolis (well, Mr. Kent, perhaps), but Bruce would be wasted on an innocent – just as the innocent would be wasted on Bruce.

And, speaking of wasted innocents and unusual relationship dynamics...

“I found a term to describe the four of you. But not from anthropological circles – from science-fiction.”

“We’re _living_ science-fiction, Alfred.”

“Which I dare say makes this all the more appropriate. An author called Ursula Le Guin. Two short stories. I’ve put the files in your Dropbox – ‘fishermen’ and ‘birthday’, along with an essay about her work. Some light reading for the remainder of the evening.” He smiles and taps his glass to Bruce’s. “Happy reading.”


End file.
